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Jeter’s Agent Has Low Profile and a Well-Known Task

A quarter-century before he was in contentious negotiations with the Yankees over the future value of Derek Jeter, Casey Close was dreaming of his own major league career.

Close was a star at the University of Michigan when Jeter was still in grade school in Kalamazoo. In 1986, his senior year in Ann Arbor, Close batted .440 with 19 home runs and 72 runs batted in. He was voted Baseball America’s College Player of the Year and a first-team all-American.

“He had power, but didn’t have a lot of speed,” said Barry Larkin, a Michigan teammate and a future Cincinnati Reds star, “and that’s about all he didn’t have. He had a great arm, power and a nice bat.”

Close and Larkin, both Ohio natives, were also roommates who were united in feeling slighted by Ohio State’s not recruiting them.

“That really chaffed him,” Larkin said. “When we played Ohio State, we had extra motivation. I remember him destroying the ball against them. We beat them up pretty good.”

Larkin played 19 seasons for the Reds and is a possible Hall of Famer, but Close never rose above Class AAA. An outfielder and occasional pitcher, Close was drafted in the seventh round by the Yankees in 1986 and played for three seasons at Oneonta, Albany/Colonie and Columbus before asking for his release and moving on to Calgary, the Seattle Mariners’ top minor league team.

His career ended there after two seasons, despite his hitting .330 and .270. But Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics’ general manager, said that when he was a scout for the team, he wanted to sign Close.

“If Casey had hung around,” he said by phone from Oakland, “he would have played in the big leagues or would have been a great player in Japan. But he was ready to move on.”

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Casey Close dreamed of his own baseball career while playing at the University of Michigan.Credit
University of Michigan

Looking back during an interview with Baseball America in 2007, Close said: “I went into professional baseball thinking that I was going to be a very good major league player. My contemporaries, Hal Morris or Will Clark or Rafael Palmeiro, I matched up with fine.”

But he came to believe that he was better suited for college baseball and cited “playing every single day, the ups and downs, putting too much pressure on myself, dealing with failure.”

In 2006, when IMG stopped representing team sports athletes in their on-field contract talks, Close took his practice to Creative Artists Agency, and Jeter followed.

Now the Yankees and the 36-year-old Jeter cannot agree on what to pay him or for how many years.

Last week, Close publicly thrust himself into the debate about Jeter. In a column published Sunday, Close told The Daily News that the Yankees’ unwillingness to pay Jeter for his “total contribution to their franchise” was “baffling” to him.

“There’s a reason the Yankees themselves have stated that Derek Jeter is their modern-day Babe Ruth,” he said.

Close’s remarks prompted Cashman to ratchet up the tension. He told The New York Times that he had encouraged Jeter to test the free-agent market. “We have been very honest and direct with them — meaning Derek and Casey,” Cashman said. “We have made it clear to them that our primary focus is his on-the-field performance.”

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Casey Close, the longtime agent for Derek Jeter, with his wife, Gretchen Carlson, a co-host on a Fox News morning show.Credit
Marc Dimov/PatrickMcMullen.com

Sandy Montag, a former colleague of Close’s at IMG, said he did not view Close’s comments as public posturing.

“I view them as Casey being protective of Jeter,” said Montag, an IMG senior corporate vice president. “They’ve known each other a long time. Casey’s just an honest guy protecting his friend. It’s a negotiation; he and Brian are doing whatever they can do to make a deal.”

Close has not responded to Cashman and declined a request to be interviewed for this article.

As a baseball agent, Close inhabits a universe where the dominant personality is Scott Boras, also a former minor leaguer. Fans know Boras’s face and are familiar with his controversial role in Alex Rodriguez’s opt-out from his Yankees contract in 2007. The New Yorker profiled Boras in an article headlined “The Extortionist.” Close, whose clients include Ryan Howard, Derrek Lee, Ben Sheets and Michael Cuddyer, is not a boldface name.

“For Casey to do what he did, when I wasn’t an unrestricted free agent, with no other teams in the bidding, was great,” Howard said in a phone interview.

Beane, who deals with Close regularly, said: “He’s so competent in his second career that you’d never expect someone that bright to have been a former player. I can say that as a former player.”

Close’s renown is also exceeded by that of his wife, Gretchen Carlson, the 1989 Miss America and a co-anchor of the Fox News Channel’s morning show, “Fox & Friends.”

They met on a blind date. “My contact was telling me, ‘I think I found the perfect person for you because you’re young, you’re single, you work too hard, you’re never around on the weekends,’ and she was doing a lot of the same things,” he told Baseball America. “And I remember asking myself: ‘Whoa, back up a little bit. Why is she having a problem getting a date?’ And sure enough, it had nothing to do with her. She was working from 3 p.m. to 11 at night.”

Close may now be working extra hours to keep Jeter a Yankee at a salary he and the team can live with.

Alan Schwarz contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 25, 2010, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Jeter’s Agent Has Low Profile And Highly Publicized Task. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe